“Good morning, Mr. McCrae,” Tuesday said as I stepped off the elevator. She held out a large black ceramic mug withBest Big Brotheron it.
“How do you always know when to be at the elevator?” I asked. I took a sip of my coffee. Black with a dash of cinnamon. Just how I liked it.
“I can see your car pull up through the office window,” she confessed. “If you ever start driving a Honda, you’ll be able to sneak up on me.”
Tuesday ran me through the morning’s updates and reminders as we headed for my office. I nodded at everyone in the halls, smiling politely, but not so politely that they’d stop me to chat. Since I wasn’t exactly known for being social, it wasn’t uncommon for me.
The MIRI offices had undergone renovations last year, leaving them sleek and modern in order to instill confidence for the new batch of tech-focused industry giants who were looking to start conventions and trade shows of their own. Most of the office was an open floor plan with solid hickory workstations, an industrial-looking roof with long LED lights hanging, a polished concrete floor, and walnut-slatted walls. I’d overseen the remodeling myself.
My office was pretty much the same, but I was always in and out of it, preferring to discuss things with people face-to-face rather than dealing with inter-office emails and the like. Today, however, I wasn’t feeling overly social, so when I reached my office, I thanked Tuesday and requested I not be disturbed unless it was urgent. She nodded at once and left, closing the door behind her.
I drank my coffee in silence as I stared at the Seattle skyline out the window. It had been nice to wake up to someone making me breakfast this morning, even if I had been thrown off by Lumen’s presence in my kitchen. In my sister’s clothes. Evanne had been ecstatic to have Ms. Browne to talk to over her eggs. For that bit of time, it had almost felt like we were a family, the three of us.
I shook my head. I needed to stop thinking like that immediately. Lumen and I weren’t parents, at least not of the same child. The three of us weren’t a family. How could I even be thinking that? I barely knew Lumen, and the little I knew wasn’t anything important. Why would I ever think that would lead to the three of us being a family?
I hadn’t been able to make one with Keli, and Evanne was her biological daughter. The fact that I hadn’t wanted to be in a relationship with Keli hadn’t helped matters much, of course, but I was daft to think things with Lumen would be different just because we’d had a few good times together.
No, I needed to walk away. I had my daughter to focus on and a huge tech conference to organize. I didn’t have the time or resources to try to make something happen with Lumen. It wasn’t fair of me to keep letting her cook meals for us and read bedtime stories to my kid and…then spend the night in my bed.
When we first slept together, we’d agreed what we were doing was just fun, but after these past few days, I didn’t know if that still applied. I needed to end things before they got out of hand.
She was my daughter’s teacher. Nothing more. Someone I would occasionally see at school functions and parent-teacher meetings. I’d only talk to her about Evanne’s progress as a student. Nothing else, nothing personal. That was the way it had to be.
The thought left a distaste in my mouth and a pain in my head, neither of which managed to distract me from thinking about how difficult it was going to be to stay away from Lumen. I knew it was the right thing to do for all of us, but not how I’d manage it. Not when all I could think about was how I’d had more genuine fun with Lumen in the short time I’d known her than I’d had with Keli the entire time we’d been together.
When it came to getting advice about this sort of thing, there was only one person I could talk to.
Da answered on the second ring.
“Alec, good mornin’, lad.” His familiar Scottish brogue filled my office, that one sentence giving me a measure of calm. “How’re ye finding full-time fatherhood?”
“Challenging,” I said.
“And ye’ve only the one,” he reminded me with a laugh.
Aye, that was true. I might’ve been a single parent at the moment, but my father had been a parent to five after my mother died. I’d been the oldest at eight, and my only sister – at the time – Maggie, had been less than a year. When he’d met Theresa Carideo, a widow with four children, that had brought us to ten kids when they married. To that, they’d added three of their own, my half-brothers Sean and Xander, and my half-sister, London.
A little over two years after Theresa became my stepmother, her brother and sister-in-law died, making orphans of their three children. Those had been added to our already large family to make us eighteen total, two parents and sixteen kids.
I couldn’t imagine having even one or two more children, let alone that many. And most of us had been a mite more mischievous than my own child.
“Aye, lad, it seems no matter how many, children are always a challenge, even a bonnie lass like yer own.”
“She is something special, all right. I’m getting used to having her around, even if I’ve had to spend less time at the office.” I traced a squiggling scratch that ran across one corner of my desk. Evanne had made it when she was four. I’d brought her to the office during one of my weekends, and she’d tried ‘drawing’ with a pair of scissors before I’d managed to catch her.
I’d nearly had a heart attack when I’d seen her, and I’d never had the courage to tell anyone but my father about it. I kept the scratch to remind me of how close I’d come to hurting my daughter simply because I’d cared more about work than making sure my office was safe for her.
“Time away is good for the soul, Alec. Ya won’t regret putting Evanne before work. MIRI doesna need ya there at all hours.”
While I’d never doubted how much my father loved me, he had always spent a vast amount of time at work. Even after he’d officially retired from MIRI, he’d been unable to stay away completely. I’d inherited my workaholic tendencies from him, but I’d been at it much longer and on my own. It was a much harder habit to break at my age than it would have been if I’d been younger.
I swallowed thickly. I’d never been good at this sort of talk. “I’m having other…problems, though, Da.”
“Spill it, lad.”
I told him about Lumen and just about everything that happened between us, including the fact that Lumen was Evanne’s teacher. That led into my worries about how she was affecting my work, and how I was worried that it would only get worse.
“I’m not understandin’ why this is an issue,” he interrupted. “If ya like the lass, take her on a proper date.”
